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Set your story in a desert town.

Posted in Adventure on Jun 23, 2023

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✍️ 52 stories

Lucy

Submitted to Contest #204

"Dr. Cooper, the patient in room four is ready." Lucy gripped the hospital bed rails and gritted her teeth. Beads of sweat fell down her face.  An equally sweaty nurse named Jen who had a practical short haircut and was wearing Christmas tree scrubs, hung up the phone and came around the bed, placing her cool hand on Lucy's forehead.“It’s so damn hot in here!” Lucy groaned. “I know, honey. The air conditioning in the maternity ward is on the fritz. They should get it fixed soon.”“It’s 100 degrees outside. They better get ...

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Release

Submitted to Contest #204

Every morning before the sun appeared, Harper found herself outside her small shop, sweeping the porch without fail. She exhaled, resting her hands on top of the straw broom. She’d still be sweeping this porch in forty years, fighting the endless battle with the sand. And what else did she have to look forward to? She had nothing but her candle shop. Her parents had died years ago, and this small shop with her tiny apartment above it was all Harper had left of them. Looking up, she could make out just a hint of the rainbow effect of th...

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Mountain Picnic

Submitted to Contest #204

I never liked sand. It gets under your fingertips, your hair, and all over your darn clothes. My mother is constantly telling me to “brush that filth” off my dress, but it is impossible in this desert town. As Adam and I are walkin’ up the path, I can feel the sand diggin’ in between my toes. We stop in a clearing to shake the sand out, and we peer over the small town. I don’t got any memories before moving here, I was a youngin’. When we arrived, mother had gone to work in the saloon. In exchange, the owner let us sleep in the back wit...

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Life and Death in the Desert

Submitted to Contest #204

I stood at the top of a dusty mountain, the searing afternoon sun high above me, and the endless, unforgiving desert below. Mountain. To me it was just some long dead thing; a giant, crumbling form of rock and dust and nothing more. There was no life as far as my eyes could see, like the remains of an ancient and far-off world, void of the necessary ingredients and conditions to create and sustain life; its punishment absolute after some ruinous cataclysm, now mine to bear alone. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long, exasperate...

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That Kind of Outlaw

Submitted to Contest #204

I’ll never forget when my son Will said, “I’ll be an outlaw when I grow up.” We were in the center of town, on the sand-filled main road, in a crowd of a thousand people, watching a hanging. Some families had picnics with a nice spread and chairs, but most of us stood. The angrier folks were pushing against the makeshift fence that surrounded the gallows and was guarded by some men the sheriff deputized every Saturday.It was what my son said that I remember. When he said it I felt a shiver run down my spine, but he was young, only seven year...

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Colton, Nevada

Submitted to Contest #204

Colton is a ghost town in the middle Nevada’s of the Great Basin.  Under normal circumstances, I would have never been aware of this fact, but two years ago when my Honda Civic broke down driving north on Highway 93.  After seven years as a Las Vegas dealer at one of the major casinos, I saw things I did not wish to be a part of any longer so I decided to head back east to be closer to my own family.     It was when I noticed a rise in my engine temperature gauge that I began to worry.  With the outside te...

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The Desert Basement

Submitted to Contest #204

The Desert Basement Veva walked around the house, needing the outhouse but too curious by the scraping sound she was hearing coming from the basement. When her grandpa had built the house he put the basement about 10 feet from the back of the house in case the rains came and flooded the dry earth, leading the basement to flood from the overflow of water. It was still underground but it was not used like her friends’ basements. They had canned goods and food for the harsh winters when no crops could be grown. Her basement had cells, cages she...

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One More Time

Submitted to Contest #204

Heather applied a new coat of Juicy lip gloss and sighed. It was summer, the Californian sun sure to give her a Christina tan, and she was stuck at work. She didn’t hate working at dELIA’s, the employee discounts were sweet and, like, where else was she supposed to work, Wet Seal? Ew. So, yeah, dELIA’s was good, but on days like this, when there weren’t any customers and she had used up all of her monthly phone call minutes, it was a little annoying.  She was playing Snake when the door chimed.  “Welcome to dELIA’s,” she called...

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For Love

Submitted to Contest #204

FOR LOVE “No one has to die here,” the blue-eyed young man said as he stepped forward out of the shadows under the sagging balcony of the abandoned saloon.     You got that wrong kid, Jon Henry thought. Someone has to die; someone has to pay for what you did.    He was mounted on sorrel gelding, to the left of Gabe Clements, slightly hunched over the pommel of his saddle. His hooded eyes scanned the deserted streets of the once prosperous town of Hope. The town had been founded on its na...

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OPEN Sign

Submitted to Contest #204

I miss the clouds. I don’t know where they’ve gone but I wish they’d come back. They used to provide brief moments of shade or break up the monotony of the blue desert sky, add a darkened reprieve to the tan/beige monopoly of the ground. From the beginning of time to the end of it and now to here the land has always remained the same. The heat remains brutal, life teams beneath the hot sands, and the mountains fill the distance with imposing monoliths. But now the sky is a little more empty, and I wish the sun's friends would return. Becaus...

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Jeopardy squared

Submitted to Contest #204

It’s hot. So hot the earth is rising into the sky.That old mare died a while ago. I gave her my last water and still she died.I pull the silk kerchief off my neck, take my hat off – the rim is soaked with sweat and salt - put the kerchief on my head so it drapes over my neck and push the hat back on. Nothing makes anything any better. The sand ekes into my boots; I can feel blisters build.I stink of sweat.I drop the saddle. I’ll come back for it. If I carry it any further I’ll burn up like a mesquite leaf on a bed of coals. That little hiss ...

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Discount Pinkerton

Submitted to Contest #204

“The bastard’s still sending letters to her you know? There’s one mail wagon that the town pays privately to go to Wichita and he’s using my money to make sure these letters, these insults to my character, these envelopes full of smut get to my daughter!” I found the mayor of Springfield Illinois to be a prideful man. His office had an artisan desk made from Canadian spruce, the chair was tanned with leather fresh from the Chicago meat packing plants, and brass rimmed portraits covered the walls.        &n...

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Between the Dunes

Submitted to Contest #204

Across vast dunes of burning yellow stands a human shaped figure wrapped in robes to protect them from the sun. The robes cover the person in a blue that mimics the color of water the vast desert desperately craves. The azure hued being looks out from dark lensed goggles across the ocean of sand before them. They look for anything to stick out, but the desert reveals nothing. “Nothing can live here” the figure thought “Days of traveling and everywhere I look is identical to the day before” The robed traveler had brought five days worth of...

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When strangers were welcome here

Submitted to Contest #204

“And don’t let me hear another ‘Is it done?’. I’ve been simmering this stew all day and it’s powerful hot in here and you’ve been under my feet all day, Julian!”Mam always got mad-minded when Pa was gone celebrating with his hunt friends after he brought a short horned deer from the mountains. They were getting rarer with the drought this year. I hear the old folks talking about droughts and how bad things are in this day and age along with the creaks and groans of the boards outside of the mercantile. The rocking chairs that Mams’ Pa made a...

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Truth Alone Live on Forever

Submitted to Contest #204

Two of the train robbers lay dying in the dust, their blood leaking out and horses scattered. A third robber was riding hard, whipping his lathered horse, trying to get away from the famous lawman and his Native-American partner. The Legend sat tall in the saddle and drew his gun, his white hat and iconic black mask steady as a rock. The gun barked twice but the robber wheeled his horse and charged back towards them. The Legend had missed! After all these years, he had missed! The robber fired and three bullets tore into the trusted partner....

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